Trog is a maze game developed by Midway and released in arcades in 1990. Players control one of four dinosaurs chased by cavemen called "trog" The game includes elements of Pac-Man—collect all items in a maze, eat a special item to turn the tables on pursuers—but supports up to four players at once. Trog features claymation graphics, advertised as "Playmation" by Midway. Versions of the game for the Nintendo Entertainment System and MS-DOS were released by Acclaim Entertainment in 1991. The ports reduce the number of simultaneous players to two.
Gameplay
The player assumes the role of Rex, Bloop, Spike, or Gwen, small Theropod-like dinosaurs in the land of "Og", home to the one-eyed cavemen known as the "Trog". Players must pick up all colored eggs lying around the map as the Trog cavemen wander around, attempting to eat them. Unlike its influential predecessor, Pac-Man, the dinos can attack at any time with a punch that does not require a power-up. Power-ups also randomly spawn to help finish the level; these include red flowers that increase the player's speed; ice cubes that freeze all on-screen Trogs; pineapples, which turn the character into a full-grown T-Rex that can temporarily eat his enemies ; and a firebrand which bestows a temporary fire breathing ability on the dinosaur. The multiplayer mode consists of two to four dinos on the same screen competing to get all of his/her same-colored eggs first, and players can either attack or protect each other. Many stages feature no walls, so characters can travel off the edge of the grid-like islands and plunge into the sea if they're not careful. The Trogs themselves are subject to all hazards the player is; they can even be taken out by their own wheels, fire and pits to comic effect. The Trogs can be one-hit punched, to the side of the head, as they approach the screen edge resulting in them falling into the sea, with bonus points rewarded to the player. There are three different levels of difficulty: Easy, Advanced and Expert. Advanced Mode rewards a 200,000 level bonus and Expert rewards a 400,000 level bonus. As the levels progress, the cavemen become smarter and invent new ways to capture the dinosaurs. They eventually create fire pits and wheels to burn and flatten, respectively, the character and springs to bounce themselves all over the screen. Catapults and transportation chambers in latter stages help evade these attacks, however these are also usable by the Trogs resulting in some tactical gameplay options. There are 49 stages in all; completing them all wins the game.
Development
The arcade version features "Playmation" graphics in which character models were created with clay animation. The original arcade prototype of Trog was more of a strategy/puzzle type game which consisted of the player assuming the role of a hand which would lay bones to guide their corresponding dinosaur in the right path. However, this idea was heavily panned and ridiculed during testing, with one tester allegedly defacing one of the cabinets to add an "R" to the label of the bone button. Due to the poor reception, Bally/Midway considered canceling the game altogether, but the game was given a second chance for two reasons. The first one was because the game's creator Jack Haeger had already spent so much of the budget on the clay animation and the second reason was because one of the testers suggested turning it into a Pac-Man-like game.
Ports
The home releases only support two players instead of four. The NES version keeps Bloop and Spike as the playable characters, while the MS-DOS port has Bloop and Rex.
Legacy
Characters from the game make appearances in later Midway titles. In the game Revolution X, one of the Trogs appears as a shootable "easter egg". In the horrorrail shooterCarnEvil, one of the trog can be found in the Freak Show portion of the game as an attraction in the background. He is frozen in a block of ice and labeled "Frozen In Time!". The dinosaur characters also appear as enemies in the Rickety Town level of the game.
